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Comment by raincom | Hacker News Reader

It is common to hear phrases such as "Mr 10 percent" as a reference to powerful leaders in various countries. For instance, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is called "Mr 10 percent". 10 percent cut from every contract. This is not unique to Pakistan. In India, many regional party leaders (basically, they and their family own the political party) want 20 percent cut.

When one hears 2-6%, it is just the floor.

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during the nineties there was this joke going around in Spain:

the leaders of Germany, France, and Spain meet to discuss infrastructure...says the German chancelor: see this autobahn? 10% in my pocket...comes the French president and says: this autoroute? 20%...ha!, the Spanish prime minister says, you don't see no autopista here do you?

Don’t need to look that far. The person in the White House is doing the same thing.

The corruption elsewhere is of different order. In US, one can bid up four times normal, one at least delivers the quality. Elsewhere, roads fail, buildings fall, bridges collapse, pipes burst upon the first use, ...

If they are built at all.

When was the last time the US built anything at all?

We did just break ground on the new tunnel from NJ to NYC for trains. We'll see how that plays out in the next 1-2 decades.

The US manufactures more goods annually than Germany, Japan, and S. Korea combined.

Isn't its population also larger than all three combined? It seems like some per capita measurement might be more telling here.

If you go that route, then the US is ahead of China for manufacturing output per capita. Which probably isn't what you wanted to hear.

That's quite optimistic. How many months of further development does a deal usually need to have something sizeable that can collapse?

I developed a three-tier corruption test in US:

1. Perfect roads. Little visible construction despite high traffic: no corruption.

2. Awful roads. Almost no visible construction - medium corruption.

3. Continuous years-long construction. Roads always semi -closed, semi-permanent "work zone". When one construction ends, another immediately starts - extremely high corruption

I think you must consider geology and the economic health of each area together.

That's why in Northern California all the roads are constantly under construction, but in Finland they're perfect. I was thinking that in California one needs to get an SUV simply because a sedan's suspension will not last much longer

We get the roads re-surfaced at a frequency that, magically, mirrors elections.

Zany stuff.

> In US, one can bid up four times normal, one at least delivers the quality.

Did you miss the entire Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool disaster?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/climate/reflecting-pool-c...

Or alternately, why should anyone believe that was a one-off event and not the new normal for recent no-bid contracts being awarded by an obviously corrupt administration?

$TRUMP coin is a way for foreign and domestic players to stuff money into his pockets.

Is everyone here so afraid of downvotes or out of touch that they don't remember "10% for the big guy" Biden? I know the US doesn't exactly get "Foreign Aid" but our politicians sure do, and it's a broad spectrum problem.

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